Author: Richard R. Tryon
APRIL 11, 2019 By Ned Ryun wrote:
TRUMP IS RIGHT: PR SHOULD NOT GET MORE HURRICANE RELIEF SUBSIDIES
In the last week, President Trump has been denounced for opposing more taxpayer funds for Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Trump has put the blame squarely on the corrupt political leadership of Puerto Rico and highlighted that Puerto Rico has received more relief funding than Florida and Texas combined
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Did it occur to you that getting a dollar's worth of help to PR vs Texas and Florida is impossible, because of the distance and lack of easy access to all kinds of disaster support? You might already sense my first of many reasons to want to help you?
Ryun:
While there is some disagreement over the exact figure that Puerto Rico has received, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has reported $20 billion in hurricane recovery funds, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency has funded an additional $8 billion and the Small Business Administration has approved $2 billion in loans. Yet we are told Puerto Rico needs more of American taxpayers’ money.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Do you know how much harder it is to replace an entire electrical GRID with most of its towers going over mountains instead of flat lands? It took moving by air and sea a huge expense to get equipment 1,000 or more miles away to a disaster zone that had no way to feed and house or unload or deliver all that had to come to a single large port that normally worked at capacity just to keep all of society functioning, and suddenly, it lost all power to make any of it work. No communications meant that nobody knew which roads and bridges were open? The Governor could not even have a way to focus on counting the dead in an island 110 miles x 35 miles with 3.5 million mouths to feed when 85% of what they eat comes from ships all starting in Jacksonville, FL on ships required by U.S law to be built in the U.S.by union workers who also crew the boats. Did you know this?
Ryun:
Democrats are insisting that American taxpayers continue to further fund Puerto Rican leaders’ additional demands. The fact of the matter is, not one more dime in funding should be sent to Puerto Rico until it gets its political house in order, either of its own accord or by the Trump administration forcing systematic change. Putting more money into a broken system won’t fix anything. Most importantly, it will only continue to hurt our fellow citizens—the people of Puerto Rico
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Isn't this conclusion sophomoric when you have not begun to consider how, when, and why the elected leaders of PR have to use the same technology to get elected as their mainland American counterparts? The conclusion below is not without elements of truth as is the case about the mainland 'political swamp' full of millions of workers called Civil Service government employees who owe their survival to electric political leaders who spend millions to get elected frequently. Have you overlooked this fact?
Ryun:
The real problems facing the people of Puerto Rico have nothing to do with Trump, or the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. It has nothing to do with statehood or continuing its territorial status. It has nothing to do with caring or not caring. It is about rank corruption in which the people of Puerto Rico are the victims and the corrupt Puerto Rican political class are the villains.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Yes, the villains in the mainland, and its owned territory or possession, are alike even though their party names are not just Republicans vs Democrats or Populares vs Statehooders. Both are human and their survival is now dependent on an open full time effort to raise money to stay in office.Those in PR more like Democrats have been the Statehooders who are more collectivists in their thinking.
Ryun:
For decades, Puerto Rico has been governed by a patronage system centered on the 78 mayors across the island, who are truly the real political power in Puerto Rico. Many of the mayors have been more than happy to cut deals that allow them to stay in power even if it means failing to actually do their jobs, like collecting property taxes, utility bills, and fees for basic services. Current estimates indicate there is a pool of $3 billion in uncollected property taxes.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Has it not occurred to you that Mayors of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,San Francisco and many others are no different that those of San Juan, Caguas, Ponce, and Mayagüez? And those of small towns by the score in both most states and most municipalities (sort of like counties in the mainland) are no different? They all survive by stealing from the same trough.
Ryun:
According to a recent U.S. Treasury report, there are hundreds of thousands of properties on the island that are either unregistered or improperly defined because the Puerto Rican titling system hasn’t been updated in nearly 70 years. Even worse, there is a pool of billions of dollars, by some estimates in the neighborhood of $10 billion, in uncollected water bills, electric bills, and tourism tax dollars.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Yes, your number has merit, but you do not consider do you that unpaid property taxes are always paid in PR, because the next owner can not get title by Spanish local law over property without paying not only all the amounts never paid, but also all interest, penalties and fines levied as well? What this means is that fewer properties change hands and most live in rentals save for perhaps a million that occupuy government build concrete walls and roofed homes that have no furnaces. I hope you did not forget that nobody in PR knows of a need for a furnace unless they live high in a mountain area.
Ryun:
Who wins in this system? The politicians and the politically powerful who can cut a deal with elected officials.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Might you allow that we mainlanders taught the politicians how to do it, but without giving PR a license to print money? So, they sold tax exempt bonds to wealthy Americans, both local and mainlanders to shelter income from U.S. and P.R. personal income tax.
Ryun:
But what’s a few billion among friends when it allows certain people to stay in power and their patrons to have bigger bank accounts? Everyone walks away happy — except, of course, the average citizen of Puerto Rico, who is then left with decaying infrastructure and fewer basic services because there is no tax revenue to fund these vital projects.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Are you not failing to recognize that 40% of the population in PR pay no local or U.S. Federal taxes on income, while paying 11.5% tax on a haircut?
Ryun:
If Puerto Rico would fix its tax system, both with respect to property taxes and basic services, it would result in nearly a billion dollars in annual revenue. That’s a billion dollars annually that their fellow Americans would no longer need to send to prop up Puerto Rico.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Neither competing political party can abandon its perpetual need to steal to stay in power and why do you ignore the one way that can change it? Instead you conclude below:
Ryun:
Instead, the American taxpayers are expected to be an open checkbook with no strings attached to fund a broken and corrupt system. The answer is not to further abuse taxpayers by sending more federal dollars to Puerto Rico. The answer is “Puerto Rico, heal thyself.”
The press and the Democrats will never acknowledge that Trump is right. It would be nice, for once, to see every Republican in Washington DC support him, truly help the people of Puerto Rico, and protect American taxpayers.
Response by Richard R.Tryon
Can you consider observing that 40% that pay nothing and have very small unreported cash income and live with happy ability to help barter exchange goods and services without a bank? Can you not see that they are the harbinger of the mainland when robots make 40% do the same in many, but not all states? Mostly the big blue ones that are already seeing garbage trucks that pick-up the bins and dump into the giant crusher without walking assistants- have you not seen them?
What you might conclude and encourage is that with President Trump and a Congress that agrees, we may see that many of the 40% of the population that eats from government jobs can move to the new PR capital of Orlando, FL and leave PR with a new form of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” emerge. Of course to get it, the Court must give the current creditors a tax-free hair -cut; and let the independents maintain dual citizenship with alimony from the men that forced the 1898 marriage at gun-point. Give three decades to build a way for mainlander retirees to live in PR sans taxes and they will come when food can be grown locally and not be regulated so as to fail to compete with the vested winners in the status quo, is available.
Ned Ryun is the founder and CEO of American Majority, a non-partisan training institute whose mission is to identify and mold the next wave of liberty-minded new leaders, grassroots activists and community leaders
This introduction material may help reader sense that when we do not know and understand the complexity of history, we are easily finding that we mis-understand much of what we need to know to comprehend meaningful insights importance to sound decision making.
Equally confusing is that in the heat of intellectual battle, we are also prone to both being mislead by our own bias and also that of our mentors. Being 86 helps escape the fear of mentors!
Puerto Rico has never really known any sense of nationhood. The ancient Taino's and Caribes had no good way to maintain any sort of Law or discipline among peoples in remote living areas for which no real impetus existed to have much time for interactions. When conquered by the Conquistadores from Spain it was a new and frightening experience that left the island after 400 years devoid of many of its populations and perhaps all of its would be leaders.
The arrival of the American fleet that bombarded the Moro Fortress at the entrance to the bay, was apparently overshadowed by the beach landing at Guánica that enabled a skirmish six miles to the East in which six defenders died to justify a surrender to avoid further blood shed.
What did that surrender do that was different from other lands possessed as a result of the show Spanish-American War of 1898?
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